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Anders Christian Madsen reports on the Erdem show

by Anders Christian Madsen on 18 February 2014.

Held at a dim Old Selfridges Hotel, which had been decked out with a burnt orange carpet, the stage was more than set for a richly gloomy experience. That the clothes followed troop, for instance in a dominatrixy black patent leather coat and dress with snakeskin texture or thick florally gold dresses, ended up in a kind of overkill, which lacked the intelligent chicness and quiet temper of Erdem’s work when it’s best.

Erdem has always had in his spine-chillingly precise and alarmingly dainty aesthetic a natural darkness, which was perfectly evident even when he filled up the ballroom of the Savoy with an all-Wedgewood blue collection, or created a wintery scene with white fairy gowns. Erdem’s ability to portray toughness through frailty is what has always made him special within the otherwise un-special corner of little floral dress designers. So when, for his autumn/winter 2014 collection, he turned to darker, tougher materials and increased the sumptuous opulence levels, his universe suddenly almost seemed too uncomplicated. Held at a dim Old Selfridges Hotel, which had been decked out with a burnt orange carpet, the stage was more than set for a richly gloomy experience. That the clothes followed troop, for instance in a dominatrixy black patent leather coat and dress with snakeskin texture or thick florally gold dresses, ended up in a kind of overkill, which lacked the intelligent chicness and quiet temper of Erdem’s work when it’s best. It wasn’t that it wasn’t a pretty collection, because it would be hard to pull anything out of Erdem’s world that wouldn’t get that stamp. It was, perhaps, that it was just a pretty collection.